Narrative Nonfiction
This is the transcript for the first video in the twelve-part series “Writing The Lion’s Gate,” featuring
Steve Pressfield and Shawn Coyne discussing The Lion’s Gate’s road to publication.
Shawn: A couple of years ago, when actually I had just started acting as your agent, I came out to LA and
we sat down to talk about the future and what your projects were going to be. We had no inkling of
doing Black Irish and The Profession was on the horizon. So my big thing was—I’m going to get Pressfield
to do a series character.
Steve: Ah…
Shawn: I’m going to make this great character in The Profession a series character—and bang, bang,
bang, we’ll do a Tom Clancy, kind of like Jack Ryan thing. It’s going to be incredible.
Steve: I had forgotten about that completely.
Shawn: [laughing] It’s going to be incredible. So I gave you maybe forty-five minutes of a pitch. And you
were giving me your “Pressfield nods” . . . .
Steve: [laughing]
Shawn: And you were like, “You know, that’s a pretty good idea and I’ll think about it, but there is one
project that I’ve kind of been mulling.” And you said, “I’d like to do my next novel—novel—about the Six
Day War.”
Steve: Six Day War, yes.
Shawn: And I was like, “You want to write a novel about the Six Day War?” And you were like, “Yeah, I
want to make it sort of like a Gates of Fire, and sort of use fictional characters, but to use as much of the
history, so I’m going to need to go to Israel, and I’m going to need to talk to these guys. I need to get the
background, I need to talk to, you know . . . . ”
And I’m like, you’re talking about a narrative nonfiction book. And you’re like, “Whoah, whoah, whoah.
Nah, I didn’t say anything about nonfiction.”
Steve: Tell me again, give me your thinking on why it couldn’t be a novel.
Shawn: You know what, I think it was kind of an intuitive thing to me. It just didn’t make any sense to
me. Because, what I always . . . . You know, I’m a guy raised Irish Catholic in Pittsburgh, anti-Semitism—
that’s the first thing I got with the communion wafer, you know. . . .
Steve: Uh-huh.
Shawn: And what always fascinated me about the Six Day War—
Steve: By the way, the Jews killed Christ.
Shawn: [laughing] Exactly!
Steve: [laughing] Never forget that.
Shawn: Exactly. So what always fascinated me about it—and you know, I was growing up in all the mideighties conflicts and everything—but it’s like, wow man, these guys are a lot of things, but they can
fight. You know? These guys are like in the middle of nowhere, they’re surrounded by everybody, and
they kick ass! And, I always found that fascinating—and to fictionalize it, just . . . . It would have
disappointed me as a reader.
Steve: Ah.
Shawn: Guys who fought in the Six Day War are still alive. And to write a novel about it is like, “Hey,
guys, your story is not good enough, I’ve got to invent new things.” And I think there are a lot of people
like me who are close to Jewish people, and they’re like, “Wow, I really wish I . . . I really wish I got
Israel. I really don’t get it. What’s it about?
Steve: Yeah. Yeah . . .
Shawn: Who are these guys? Who are these Sabras? Who are these ass kicking Israelis who come over
here and open up businesses?”
Steve: Yeah. Right. Right. Steal our parking places. . . . [laughing]
Shawn: Right, exactly. So when you said Six Day War, I’m like, yeah. That was it. That was the moment in
time, for me, in my family, where it was…like, whoah, whoah, whoah. This Israel thing is really serious.
Steve: Oh, interesting.
Shawn: They’re taking out everyone over there and they did it in six days. I wonder how that happened.
So when you said that, I was like, it’s got to be Band of Brothers. Because there’s the great Michael Oren
book on the Six Day War which is the seminal history, but there isn’t that…on the ground, you smell the
petrol, you can see just the devastation and the camaraderie.
Steve: Right, right.
Shawn: And I knew if there was one guy who was going to be able to do that, it would be you because
that’s your . . . . That’s your sweet spot. You write combat action really—
Steve: Which I felt that too. Not being ego-maniacal at all—
Shawn: Right!
Steve: I felt that too. But in a way, what we’re really talking about here is genre, right?
Shawn: Yes.
Steve: I’m suggesting, let’s try this genre, and you’re saying, “No, no, no, no. It’s got to be this genre.”
So writers go wrong a lot of times, they pick the wrong genre. They have an idea and they do it in the
wrong way. So you were saying narrative nonfiction. In fact, I remember that you gave me Black Hawk
Down—
Shawn: Yes.
Steve: As an example of what narrative nonfiction was—which I didn’t even know what it was. So,
basically narrative nonfiction is like fiction, only it’s real people and they’re doing what they really did.
You’re not taking those real people and tweaking anything, you’re going to find out what—what they
did.
Shawn: So, that’s how I remember the beginning and . . . . You did not jump on board, as I recall,
immediately.
Steve: No, that’s true. And I remember you saying, “This is not going to work as a novel, you can’t do it
as a novel.” And you were absolutely emphatic about it. You know, there was no doubt in your mind.
And, my Resistance came up—capital ‘R’ Resistance came up—and I thought to myself—I started kind of
wetting my pants, you know—and I thought—
Shawn: [laughing] “Maybe I should do this Gent series.”
Steve: [laughing] Am I gonna write . . . How can . . . I’ve never written narrative nonfiction. Can I do it,
you know? You know?
Shawn: I’m not a journalist, I’m not a—
Steve: What am I going to do without the crutch of being able to make up stories? You know, I want the
plot to go this way, so I just make it up. But that was a great example, of I think, of partnership—of a
creative partnership—and I forget how long I had to sit with that. It wasn’t too long.
Shawn: It was a couple of months.
Steve: Really?
Shawn: Yeah.
Steve: I remember it as a couple of days. But, anyway, I somehow realized that you were right.
Next Time:
Steve: I didn’t find out that I was a Jew until I was twelve, but what happened was the real Jews rejected
me. And then came 1967, the Six Day War. Wow. These are Jews I can relate to.
Click to watch the second video in this series: Jewish Heritage.